2011 Game Thread: Knicks @ Nuggets

So far just three people have emailed their order number, so if you’re the only person to enter you have a 25% chance to win those tickets. If you’re the only one and you buy 3 T-shirts, you have a 50% chance of winning them (one ping pong ball per shirt). Even if the number of people who enter triple in the next 24 hours, one shirt will give you a 10% chance of winning! I think those are pretty good odds. If I’m reading StubHub correctly, they are selling for $200-$700. Hence this isn’t a bad risk. At worst you have a unique shirt to wear, or a fun present to give the special Knick fan in your life for the holidays. At best, you’ve won two tickets to an exciting game, with a cool story to tell as well.

206 comments on “2011 Game Thread: Knicks @ Nuggets”

Well, this should be interesting. Over the last 10 years, it’s only when it seems as if there’s no chance the Nix can prevail that they play out of their mind and win.

Then again, I tend to read tea leaves and go with vague intuitions far more than I ever would in analyzing/understanding b-ball than I do in any other subject. The stats say we’s goings ta git whupped. We’ll see…

Just a thought, but could Gilbert Arenas be a latrell sprewell kind of opportunity? He’s played well so far this season. You could wait till December, and if Arenas stays healthy till then, move Curry and Felton to the Wiz — they’d probably be willing to give up a young player (nick young?) along with a first round pick just to get Arenas off their roster. I know I’m going to get my head bitten off for this comment, but he’s a career 36% 3pt shooter at very high volumes and seems like a very smart guy who might be better able to understand D’Antoni’s system.

latke: Just a thought, but could Gilbert Arenas be a latrell sprewell kind of opportunity?He’s played well so far this season.You could wait till December, and if Arenas stays healthy till then, move Curry and Felton to the Wiz —=.

Early on, definitely a focus on pushing the pace, also gallo rushing shots. One of those players where you know immediately upon the release whether it’s good or not.

Otherwise, you look at the nuggets and you see every time a player touches the ball there’s no hesitation– a move to the basket, a shot, or a pass. No dribbling around. This should be a model for the knicks. So far good knick defense and some misses by the nuggets have kept the game competitive.

This game is tied completely out of knick effort. The offense continues to look terrible, and the knicks continue to miss open shots and shots around the basket, but it is a classic case of controlling the one thing you always can control: effort. That’s what Stoudemire was talking about when he talked about urgency. You lose five straight, and you have to have that angry adrenaline flowing all game long. Often, that’s the key to getting guys to feel lose, to start making shots, to start playing out of instinct.

“It’s still a process. And frankly the moves Walsh makes will matter more than the ones D’Antoni does.”

Ultimately that’s true. Walsh isn’t exactly the type to sit idly by and let the Knicks flounder. He’ll make some tweaks big or small. Does anyone think the Knicks will end the season with the same roster they started with?

Fields is the real deal. Anthony Randolph is not. So over the summer I said Randolph’s awful shooting makes him undesirable. As I recall I was called an idiot. Am I still an idiot? Has the shot selection or execution improved?

He was a pretty key part of that nice end to the Q… Although he misses all his Js, he still gets his hand on a lot of balls, makes excellent outlet passes, and makes some plays. No one said he was an efficient scorer. What people said was that scoring efficiency tends to improve with age and the parts of the game you can’t teach are where he excels.

Ted Nelson:
He was a pretty key part of that nice end to the Q… Although he misses all his Js, he still gets his hand on a lot of balls, makes excellent outlet passes, and makes some plays. No one said he was an efficient scorer. What people said was that scoring efficiency tends to improve with age and the parts of the game you can’t teach are where he excels.

Ted Nelson:
He was a pretty key part of that nice end to the Q… Although he misses all his Js, he still gets his hand on a lot of balls, makes excellent outlet passes, and makes some plays. No one said he was an efficient scorer. What people said was that scoring efficiency tends to improve with age and the parts of the game you can’t teach are where he excels.

you honestly cant still be defending this guy. he is horrible with the ball in his hands. Also rebounding and blockings shots aren’t necessarily the hardest skills to fill a team with. its easy to find players that can rebound the ball well. His defense is also overrated. he gets pushed around in the paint to much and has lapse in concentration

“The Honorable Cock Jowles
June 25, 2010 at 7:59 am
“I don’t disagree but to Brian’s point, Chad acts as is the fact that Fields is not on his top 100 completely supersedes the notion that he’s a great athlete and one of the best scorers in his conference.”

Exactly. As Moneyball showed us, scouts often care more about a “winner” than a guy who looks good on paper. And the reality is that those guys who project well on paper are more likely — and it’s proven that it is significantly more likely — that those players will perform well. PAWS40 isn’t some kind of voodoo black magic statistic: it’s an aggregate of the basketball events that a player enacts on the floor, then adjusted for his position (and obviously, time). Fields has an outstanding score– it’s better than John Wall! But he plays on a (probably nerdy) Stanford team that was terrible, so he’d never see ESPN screen time unless he jacked up 50 shots and scored 50 (which, in my opinion, wouldn’t be very valuable to one’s team, unless they’re even worse than 1.0 PPS). With numbers (and apparently athleticism) like Fields has, I can only guess that it’s his team’s poor play that dropped him so low. I mean, seriously, Daniel Orton? Why? Because he played alongside the best big man in NCAA basketball?”

Amare showing some trust in his teammates, keeping the ball moving. Still no one can hit an outside shot, and the nuggets are starting to execute better on offense. Knicks still shooting under 40% despite a lot of layups.

I’m watching online, and I must say: if you think Clyde is a homer, you haven’t heard the Nuggets’ crew. When Stat hit the cutting Fields for that easy layup, the play-by-play guy said (paraphrase), “A nice cut by Fields,” to which the commentary man said, “Well, it was just lazy weakside defense.”

knicks doing everything they can to make me feel like an idiot for paying for leauge pass for pc. They were 3-2 when I bought it and since dishing out the money I have been able to watch them drop five straight. Worse yet everytime I turn a game on that’s close it becomes a blowout immediately, and games that I turn on where the knicks are playing well they immediately go cold and give up leads. So not only have I not seen them win since I got this shit, I haven’t even seen them play a decent portion of a game.

Spree8nyk8: knicks doing everything they can to make me feel like an idiot for paying for leauge pass for pc.They were 3-2 when I bought it and since dishing out the money I have been able to watch them drop five straight.Worse yet everytime I turn a game on that’s close it becomes a blowout immediately, and games that I turn on where the knicks are playing well they immediately go cold and give up leads.So not only have I not seen them win since I got this shit, I haven’t even seen them play a decent portion of a game.Feels like if I did’nt watch the games maybe they’d do better….

Dude trust me, if I didn’t pay 120 bucks just to watch I would turn it off to help them lol. I’m real superstitious like that. Back in the 90’s I remember having a little foam indoor hoop and if the knicks were playing well when I was shooting on it then I’d keep shooting and if I sat down and they started losing i’d get right back up and start shooting again….

Hard to take anything either positive or negative from this game. They competed, moved the ball OK, and missed every open shot. TD is completely lost, and to me that’s one of the worst developments of this losing streak. He’s become a complete liability on offense and cannot hit anything.

could cut it to seven here — this unit is playing well, running, moving the ball, missing open thr… oops. Walker and Gallo had made those two wide open threes, we’d have an opportunity to cut it to one here. The nuggets are playing poorly, but we’ll probably see carmelo back in the game after this break. It would be huge for the knicks psyche if they could pull this one out.

Am watching the game in England. 4.30 in the morning and were losing. yeah.
Is it just me or is Feltons ball handling VERY average. Read OTL article on elluding to the point that a good ball handler allows for more time and brain space for decision making. really make sense when watching felton. He looks like he is uncomfortable running fast break.
Fields on the other hand is an amazing! Gets some terrible calls because he is a rook.

This was an interesting game because you actually had both teams actively trying to lose for large stretches. The knicks did their part by missing lots of free throws and open shots that anyone on the JV team in high school could make. The nuggets took the more covert path of standing around and allowing players to force bad shots at the end of the shot clock. In the end, the knicks’ strategy proved the more effect and they escaped with a close loss.

latke: This was an interesting game because you actually had both teams actively trying to lose for large stretches.The knicks did their part by missing lots of free throws and open shots that anyone on the JV team in high school could make.The nuggets took the more covert path of standing around and allowing players to force bad shots at the end of the shot clock.In the end, the knicks’ strategy proved the more effect and they escaped with a close loss.

Wasn’t surprised by the outcome, just that the score was even that close at the end. The only bright spot is that Fields has solidified his place as my Favorite Current Knicks Player. I’m up for trading anyone on the team but him.

I’m going to take a shred of positivity from this game. The starters (other than Mozgov) played well, Wilson was solid and a beast on D and they did show fight. Moral victories mean nothing, especially when you’re 3-8, but I do think this was a step in the right direction. They somehow have to come out with fire tomorrow and beat a slumping Kings team and go from there.

(PS one of the hardest things to take was Gary Effin’ Forbes making every shot he took, I wish he would stick to magazine publishing.)

BTW, when is Azubuike coming back? Unlike Douglas and Felton, he has a track record of being a top tier perimeter shooter. I can’t see him being affected by the Knicks’ joint psychosis regarding perimeter shooting.

d-mar: I’m going to take a shred of positivity from this game. The starters (other than Mozgov) played well, Wilson was solid and a beast on D and they did show fight. Moral victories mean nothing, especially when you’re 3-8, but I do think this was a step in the right direction. They somehow have to come out with fire tomorrow and beat a slumping Kings team and go from there.
(PS one of the hardest things to take was Gary Effin’ Forbes making every shot he took, I wish he would stick to magazine publishing.)

tomorrow hopefully they dont get blown out by the kings.. ive been a hopeful knick fan for over 2 decades and i know their routine for the last couple of years and im pretty frkn worried

Felton tonight had 19 points, 11 assists and only 1 turnover. Not sure if that final botched play was his turnover or Fields. It would be fitting though that of course Felton’s only turnover for the game was the play to try to tie the game with a few seconds left.

I think the turnover was mostly on Fields, but a decent chunk of it was Felton.

Honestly, I don’t see why they even did it (use their last timeout to get the ball to midcourt).

You’re down three, you’re obviously going for a three, why not just take the ball up the court after the made free throw? If they foul you, then fine, but it’s not like they are going to be any more likely to foul you then then if you took it out from midcourt. And it they don’t foul you, you have a better chance of getting an open three (and you don’t lose your last time out).

Unless, of course, D’Antoni was somehow planning on going for two then fouling. But that would not make sense. They had to be going for a three. So why the need to move the ball to midcourt? It wasn’t like the clock was going to keep them from getting a look at a three.

The problem was, Gallo was wide open at the top of the key and Fields missed him. I’m not sure you want Gallo taking that shot considering he was 2 for John Starks from downtown at that point, but considering the options (Felton/Chandler/Stat), I guess he’s the guy.

Hard to believe they almost pulled this one out- Bad pass by Fields at the end but Felton’s got to come up with that.

You really have to give Chandler some credit for his shot blocking- there was one play where Nene drove the lane, Chandler left his feet to challenge and still recovered to block Carmelo’s shot when Nene dished it. While I can’t see him averaging 2.5 blocks for the season, the numbers so far have been no fluke- he’s been great.

Also, if the Knicks point guard is in the paint when the shot goes up there’s about a 75% chance the other team will wind up with a lay-up at the other end- Gallo and Fields (and Walker when he’s been in) have been awful at preventing leak-outs. At least Fields has the excuse that he’s been crashing the offensive glass but this is something that needs to get corrected now.

By the way- Chandler (17-56) and Gallo (18-59) now shooting almost the exact same % from 3- yikes! And the less said about TD right now the better.